Video + Story: At Sanders’ town hall, legal experts say NSA’s dragnet spying can be curbed without undermining public safety

The USA Patriot Act has been misinterpreted, legal experts say, and the National Security Agency is collecting billions of data — everything from text messages to Google map pins and cellphone records — without probable cause from millions of Americans who have never committed a crime.

Sen. Bernie Sanders says the question is: “How do we protect people from a terrorist attack, but do it in a way that does not undermine our democracy and the privacy rights that make us a free country?”

Sanders brought two legal experts — David Cole, a Georgetown University Law School professor, and Heidi Boghosian, the head of the National Lawyers Guild — to a town hall meeting in Montpelier to answer that question on Saturday.

Cole and Boghosian detailed how corporations are collecting personal data, including credit card purchases, and selling that data to aggregators who in turn give the information to the government. They see broad collection of data from citizens as an invasion of personal privacy that should be protected under the Fourth Amendment.

The NSA collects 5 billion records per day on cellphone locations of private citizens; 200 million text messages a day; 180 million records from credit card companies; email chats and Internet histories, GPS data, smart phone app data such as Angry Birds, according to Sanders. Court, tax and birth records are online. Google maps can pin a person’s location within a few yards.

The extent to which the NSA is snooping on private citizens was unknown until last year when Edward Snowden, an IT contractor, leaked information about the agency’s activities. The NSA uses computers to filter billions of data points to determine whether Americans are involved in terrorist activities. The information is stored at hosting sites in Utah.

Sanders says the NSA’s practices, which were approved by President Barack Obama, but were not vetted by Congress, put the privacy Americans expect in jeopardy. It also has the potential to harm democracy, he said.

“What does freedom mean if the U.S. government knows about every call you’re making, has your banking records and knows who your friends are?” Sanders said. “Is that what a free society is about?”

Freedom, he says, is “very subtle,” and it can be undermined by self-censorship when people begin to fear that the government is looking over their shoulders. If you look at an Al-Qaida website or check a book out on terrorism, Sanders says, “You’ll be on a list for sure.” The sense that the government is watching affects what people talk about and what they write about.

Cole says the NSA is keeping a record of just about everything. “I go pick up my daughter at school, and I text ‘where are you’ she sends me a text, ‘I’ll be right out,’ and I send another text ‘where are you,’ and she sends me a text, ‘I’ll be right out,’ and then I send her a text, ‘where are you?’ The NSA is keeping a record of every one of those communications and storing it at a data center in Utah for five years, even though my daughter and I are not planning a terrorist act.”

We should be concerned, Cole said, when the government is adopting broad snooping programs and lying about them to keep them secret.

“Privacy matters,” Cole said. “There’s a reason why the Fourth Amendment protects our privacy and protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures. Privacy is essential to liberty, to political freedom, to the ability to talk and associate without having the government watch over you at every turn. I don’t think privacy is dead. People still close doors to houses, doors to bedrooms and put passwords on computers.

“Who would want to live in a world without privacy?” Cole said. That is the world of George Orwell’s 1984, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and Spielberg’s Minority Report.”

Much of the information the government has about Americans comes from corporations that have developed technologies that track everything we do, Cole said, and “those technology developments have radically changed the calculus with respect to privacy in the modern era.”

In the old days (less than 20 years ago), if the government wanted to know where you went, what you were reading, what you were listening to and who you hung out, they could find that out, but they’d have to spend incredible resources to spy on you or get a warrant and search your home, Cole said.

Back then, the government still couldn’t find out what you were hoping, desiring or thinking about, he said. Now, everything we do leaves a virtual trace. Every time you click on a link, “you are telling somebody else — an Internet provider or cellphone provider or a bank or a cred card company — what you’re thinking about.”

“The government now has the ability to get information on business records on everyone of us without showing that any one of us has been guilty of wrongdoing,” Cole said.

The government’s rationale, he said, is that all information is potentially relevant to a terrorist investigation.

“What the government used to be able to do because they had probable cause you were engaged in some wrongdoing they can do now without a warrant, without probable cause, without any idea of wrongdoing.That is a radical transformation in the relationship of we the people to the government.”

Boghosian described the extent to which corporate aggregators and financial institutions work with the government. Choicepoint, Experian, Texas Instruments, local law enforcement agencies, and homeland security fusion centers all aggregate data and disseminate it to national intelligence agencies.

The largest corporate aggregators have operated in a shroud of secrecy, she said.

Choicepoint, for example, works with 35 government agencies, including the FBI, the DEA, U.S. marshalls, the IRS and the ATF.

“Each day we learn more about the close relationship between corporations and the government,” Boghosian said, and the way in which institutions “operate without scrutiny and violate the law with impunity.”

The only way the snooping will come to an end, is if Americans insist that “we want to use the Internet and use a cellphone to call a child or use our credit card to make a purchase, but we don’t want to give that information to government just because we live in the modern world,” Cole said.

The good news, Cole says, is that there is bipartisan support for reform of the NSA that would end “dragnet” collection of data and instead would only allow intelligence agencies to access information when they can show there is a reason to believe the records pertain to someone they suspect is engaged in terrorist activity. There are 30 bills in Congress that would clamp down on the NSA’s surveillance activities, including the USA Freedom Act, co-sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.

The issue, Sanders says, is non-partisan. Members of Congress on the right and the left are alarmed by the extent to which the government has become Big Brother. “If you believe in limited government, how can you not be in opposition to what the NSA is doing?” Sanders said. “The conservatives are coming out and saying the right things. It’s bringing together strange bedfellows, but it’s also bringing together strange bedfellows in support of what the government is doing.”

Comments

Finally! I have been emailing Bernie for three years about this spying program asking him to look into the violation of the Constitution around this. At first Bernie only answered, “with the threat of “terrorism” we need to stay vigilant because of the terrorist threat”. Thank goodness for Snowden! He opened everyones eyes!

I have also contacted Bernie about impeaching Obama. Bernie replied, “although I don’t always agree with Barak Obama, I don’t think he should be impeached”. I am hoping this view changes also. If Obama knew about the extent of NSA spying, and did nothing about it, that is poor leadership and if he did not know about the extent of this spying program it is also poor leadership. Obama has violated far to many of our Constitutional rights, has gone around Congress and signed executive orders and has even come out and stated, “I do not need Congress, I have my pen and my phone”. We do not need a Socialist Dictator such as Obama running our country. He is a liar and a tyrant. Hopefully, this town hall meeting will open many peoples eyes.

Well I hate to break it to Sanders, but the NSA coup d’etat IS also a partisan issue. At the “Town Meeting” I did not once hear the name of the Deal Leader Obama mentioned. If there were a GOP president today, they all would have been demanding impeachment.

An audience member asked why Clapper got away with perjury and the answer was, oh the Atty General would have to bring charges. If it were a GOP adm, they all would have been demanding a special prosecutor as was the case during Nixon’s less successful coup attempt.

The 800 pound presence in the auditorium was Edward Snowden. No doubt a large majority of that audience regards him as a hero deserving recognition, honor, and complete immunity from prosecution for his brave action. Welch and Sanders, forced only by questions to acknowledge Snowden’s existence, were wishy-washy, certainly far from heaping praise on this principled man. Leahy, who was not present, actually favors throwing the book at Snowden.

Why blame Obama and not Bush who brought us the Patriot Act and this ridiculous war on terrorism to begin with– which will go on regardless of who is president? Get real. NSA spying on all if us is a deep fault in our system that goes beyond an individual leader regardless of his/her political party. It will take public pressure from all points on the political spectrum to bring about change. Hurling unsubstantiated insults is a childish response that undermines any impact a person might make. Conservatives, liberals, and everyone in between need to object loud and clear to NSA, spying and to the willingness of our ISPs and tech companies to go along with it– and often to sell the same data to marketing companies. Abolish the Patriot Act. Freedom means no litmus test for loyalty–we went that route with McCarthy, and HUAC, to our great shame and peril.

The last I knew we have a constitution and the highest court in the land should be making jugement on NSA activities. Hollering and screaming in this country is a bygone passtime and no politician pays any attention. Is it legal or is it not….that is the question. Wanna be president Sanders is a dollar late on this subject but Vermonters don’t care, they love socialism !

Sanders, Welch, and the two experts all accepted the underlying absurdity that hyper-surveillance of the entire world has anything at all to do with preventing terrorism. This much is obvious to an intelligent 6 year old if not heavily propagandized. Thus does a benevolent expression get painted over the authoritarian features of the Dear Leader. Bush would have been handled much more roughly.

My father did not spend 4 years in a concentration camp so his children and grandchildren would be spied upon. What a hypocritical group of politicians. Our elected officials should be defending our constitution. I get very upset when people tell me that you have nothing to worry about if you have not done anything wrong. Please tell that to Bobby and Jack Kennedy, John Lennon and Martin Luther King who had private information collected during the J. Edgar Hoover administration.

On another note, spying on individual is one thing but I have not heard one complaint from the business community. There are trade secrets, intellectual property and corporate inside information that can be gathered and used to make huge profits by selling them to other companies or countries. We are all vulnerable. Get off the terrorist kick. By the way did the NSA preempt the Boston Bombers, Newtown or Dallas shootings.

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